title: [General features of the patient-physician relationship].
abstract: The communication between physicians and patients is often deficient. Little time is devoted to it and the patient receives scanty information with a low emotional content. Some features of our medicine can explain this situation. The rationalist and mechanistic biological model, allows to study only those things that can be undertaken with the scientific method. Psychological, social and spiritual aspects are surpassed. It only looks at material aspects of people, limiting the communication. Patients express their symptoms in an emotional way, with multiple beliefs and fears. The physician converts them to a precise, scientific, measurable and rational medical logical type. This language is not understood by patients, generating hesitancy in the communication. The paternalism is based in the power that physicians have over patients. We give knowledge and ask the patient to subordinate and accept our power. The patient loses his moral right to be informed, to ask, to have doubts or to disagree. Our personal communication is almost always formal, unemotional and with no explanations, further limiting communication.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Cardiología, Hospital del Salvador, Santiago de Chile.
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Baeza
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Bueno
mesh_terms: D003142:Communication; D006801:Humans; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations
vernacular_title: Características generales de la comunicación médico-paciente.